Forum
Hi Mary!
Sorry for the delay in answering, I someway missed your message on first place!
About your two questions:
1) Anthony is the one doing the collection of YouTube streams. He goes after every relevant version of all songs one by one. We do not rely on Vevo / Official accounts which indeed miss many videos / views. That's why there is numbers for nearly every song, even those with 1,000 views. If there is misspellings, some videos can be missed or end inside the Orphan section as a couple of examples you pointed out, although numbers are so low that they don't change the rounded figure at the nearest 1,000.
2) The big hits always lead the pack thanks to playlists. A lot of Spotify users do not search for tunes specifically, nor they go to artist pages, instead they use playlists, for example "best of the 90s" or whatever. This is how Believe is so much ahead of the rest. Then there is best of albums. The casual 'fan' that does go to Cher's page will still tend to play a greatest hits rather than a studio album. Some artists released way less songs than Cher and need to put album tracks into best of albums, they will tend to follow a higher pattern than album tracks from the same studio album but not inside a best of.
About songs from the Sonny & Cher album Baby Don't Go indeed they were sang by other artists, I forgot to put them in yellow as we do in such cases, here too they combine for much less than 1,000 sales which is why I overlooked it!
You are correct about Live songs, they go into Orphan tracks. The aim is really to identify how many sales overall were generated from an era. A song an artist covers live is similar to a new song on a best of album, they are out of the standard process of album's eras. All those tracks fell into 'Orphan'. I also put non-traditional releases with near 0 sales, I do that for example for debut albums on independent labels (Katy Perry or Eminem had such releases), because they do not represent the real discography of the artist that we know. The Soundtrack Chastity fells into that category of 'non-valid' eras, just like Not.com.mercial.
Indeed the singles you mention haven't chart, I got nothing about them! Even at discogs there is more Promo singles than anything, so really not sure what they sold. Luckily they don't change the whole picture!
Thank you for answering me MJD, I didn't know that sales were that high in 1995! In terms of the 1987 Cher album, it was only released in the UK in January 1988, so maybe the 200k should be a little lower then.
Also, you have IICTBT: Chers Greatest Hits at 1.2 million in the US but the last update from Billboard was about 955k, so why the big difference?
In terms of Australian sales, I have a contact from Aria who has answered many questions for me about Chers sales and I know that the Greatest Hits 1965-1992 album is only at 25,000 copies, The Greatest Hits (1999) is past 210,000 and the 1987 Cher album is only Gold.
Thanks!
Hi Stephen!
Cher (the 1987 album), charted from 1988, it was released in 1987. You can see its release date on BPI site. I Found Someone was released in November too, it peaked in early 1988 pushing the album on charts. Cher was clearly just under the Top 100 during late 87, most likely selling 30k even before charting, which is why it went Silver / Gold early in 1988.
IICTBT was on 955k back in 2011, I'm sure you know we are in 2017 😉 by then it was still selling 15k/year. Then it is a 1999 package when Clubs were good for the last time. As already mentioned, Soundscan =/= comprehensive sales.
About Australia, ARIA aren't aware of up to date shipments. All their figures are based on scanned units while charting only, which is why a tally for a best of that charted a few weeks only is irrelevant. As for certifications, I do have all Australian certs on Excel already from 1990 to date. The album "Cher" is not certified, GH (1999) is 2xP.
Hi MJD,
I didn't know it was released in 1987 so thanks for that. Certifications for albums in Australia are based on shipments and Greatest Hits 1965-1992 has only shipped 25k. Aria don't track sales for older albums but they know the shipments. Cher is certified as Gold in Australia and Greatest Hits 1999 is at 3x Platinum. You can see the certification for the Greatest Hits album here:
http://www.aria.com.au/pages/aria-charts-accreditations-albums-2000.htm
MJD, can you please do a similar post about Spice Girls and Avril Lavigne?
"WTF is MDNA?"
An album that has sold more than 94% of all of your albums, Cher
what does her academy award have to do with her MUSIC career and with the fact that 96% of her albums were huge flops?
I don't see why "Burlesque" should be considered a Cher album when she only has 1 and a half song on it, it's obviously a Christina record. Actually that was the reason the Grammy didn't consider Cher when the Burlesque soundtrack was nominated for Best Compilation Soundtrack. It's all about Christina. If you don't agree, you can check the streaming. Christina's songs are much bigger than Cher's.
Closer to the Truth sold 285,000 according to Nielsen Soundscan, as of February 2014, why do you estimate its sales 380,000 in USA?
Hi Marcus!
Closer To The Truth kept going in-and-out the BB200 due to her tour bundles. By the end of July 2014, it had already scanned 337,000 copies mostly for that reason and added a few more sales afterwards.
You’re very uneducated. This album did well in Europe, she’s never sold as high as Kylie Minogue, Lady Gaga or Madonna anyway. But this isn’t bad. You’re more dyslexic than Cher, go home!
She was a national treasure on American TV, she had her own show. She sold well enough, everyone knew who she was before Believe.
Believe just came at the right time and became her biggest hit. Keep telling yourself that but you’re obviously wrong. 😂 do you not remember ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’?
Why the single 'Little Man' isn't included in her top selling singles list? It sold more than 1,5 million copies in the 60s, and was a top 10 hit in 15 countries ( #1 in five countries).
Cher is one of the biggest female icons, and she DID accumulate more than 100 million records in sales during her career, so that's that. Plus, she is one of the most successful female touring artists in the last 30 years as stated by Billboard.
The MAIN thing is that Cher did end up selling more than 100 MILLION records, and won 3 out of 4 main industry awards. Those are the things general public knows and it's why she's considered a legend. She had hits and was selling millions each time when she had a comeback, something which is very hard to achieve considering how harsh the pop music scene is towards female artists, especially towards ageing pop divas.
A true icon, and that's exactly why a musical about her life is debuting on Broadway this year :-)!
One factor not usually considered in evaluating the success of Cher (and the duo Sonny & Cher) as recording artists is the impact of their television variety series, which ran from 1971-1977. At its height in the 1973-1974 season, The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour averaged a 23.4 rating, ranking the series #6 for the season, averaging more than 15 million viewers per week. The effect of their TV popularity surely helped revive their recording careers in 1971, but it also had the effect of diminishing it, as well. With such massive exposure every week over such a long span, there was never the kind of scarcity that might drive album and single sales: fans could watch them perform three songs each and every week on television, without buying a record or turning on the radio. No other recording act in the 1970's experienced this dynamic. Even so, Cher's success as a recording artist is undeniable: five #1s, 17 top ten hits, and 51 chart singles, and rare longevity in a business where fame is often fleeting.
Hi MJD!
I'm updating Chartsinfrance's thread about Cher's sales with your new numbers (you will be mentionned, obviously) and I have a couple of questions :
- Why did you estimate the "Backstage" and "3614 Jackson highway" up to 10 000 copies sold in the UK ? I thought those records had never charted there. According to my old archive, "Backstage" never even charted in the US.
- Why is there no trace of the "Chastity" OST in the compilations part ? I know it hardly sold a thing but it still existed and it's a whole Sonny & Cher album ! 🙂
Thank you !
Hi Rell!
Figures for the 3 68-71 albums leaked, tbh I can't remember where I first collected this data but I had it saved with 15,000 sales for Backstage, 11,000 for 3614 Jackson Highway and 18,000 for Cher (from 1971). UK charts weren't that much useful back then since they were very short. Now we have Discogs to help too and we can compare quickly figures:
- 368 owners for Backstage
- 585 owners for 3614 Jackson Highway
- 2,664 owners for Cher
We know the last one sold a million and was a hit in the US where there is about half the number of Discogs users than in Europe, so sales around 100k globally look fine for the previous two, possibly a bit too high for Backstage (it would require checking details of users, by country, by date and by format to be more precise).
Chastity was indeed overlooked, back then we had 0 data for it and I have read everywhere that it sold next to nothing. Thanks to Discogs we can now see it was issued exclusively in the US, getting 134 owners there, 40% of Backstage's US owners. It sold obviously poorly, especially since at that low level you get collectors corrumpting data, but still could be enough for 20/30k sales!
Ok, thank you very much ! One last question : why do you think her "20th Century Masters" compilation sold 800 000 copies ? I haven't seen it ranked in any chart (whereas her Gold compilation sold in Scotland and Sweden). Same question for the 1992 "Half-breed" compilation and the 1974 greatest hits. Those numbers seem surprisingly high to me lol.
Thanks ! 🙂
Hi again Rell!
Compilations are always tricky because they sell under the radar, it gets worst when an artist has many of them! It's really a dispatching work, we have Soundscan annual totals of Soundscan era totals, and one can often only make educated guesses to know which best of took these sales.
There is 2 main elements telling which compilation may sell the most: the price and the availability. 20th Century Masters compilations are very cheap, also they have been largely available for 20 years in the US, a bit like 'The Essential' series. Gold is a 2-CD package, much more expensive, casual buyers will pass on it against the former one. Also, they were available initially but then hard to find. That one sold 88,000 units as per Soundscan by 2010. We never got Soundscan total for 20th Century Masters, but in 2004/2006 weekly sales were often posted at Madonnanation and it was routinely selling well, at times coming close to 1,000 weekly sales outside of the holiday season. That was after the release of 2003 The Very Best Of, before that it was likely selling 2,000 to 4,000 copies a week without ever denting on charts. It was also available on music clubs. One mistake I noticed while checking back these figures is that I merged the 2004 second 20th Century Masters, thinking it was a reissue while now that I check the tracklist it really was a volume 2. Anyway, the estimate for the two combined albums was set at 700,000 units in the US, which looks realistic once we check albums from this serie from remaining artists.
In these same weekly soundscan leaks from 2004/2006 Half Breed was selling 50-100 copies a week. At first, I though it was the original album. Fact is, Half Breed studio record is deleted for decades, in fact it was never ever released in CD. Instead, the album selling 5k-ish per year in 2005 was that early 90s package, which was too logically selling more per year during the 90s. That's why it is estimated on 250k in the US, going from 25k-ish in its first year and gradually dropping to 0 throughout the course of 20 years. It's also estimated on 40k in Canada since she was selling close to 50% more than in the US there by then (using the 10:1 proportion) and it was first issued in 1985 there.
The 1974 Greatest Hits is estimated on 500k in the US and 25k in Australia. The primary argument here is that it was the primary compilation available for 18 years which is a lot, precisely until Half Breed. That album was issued everywhere and got reissued in CD in 1990, confirming it was the A-choice during an extensive period. It has 896 owners on discogs, compilations have from 2 to 4 times less owners than studio albums (they are purchased by casual buyers, less by collectors), so that suggests it was possibly as successful as the 1971 album Cher. To be honest, now that we have Discogs data, I would most likely estimate this album even higher (I would need to enter all the data and do calculations to be sure). In the same way, a second Greatest Hits from 1974 (with a different tracklist) and The Very Best Of 2 from 1975 have decent numbers with over 500 US owners combined.
Wow ! Thanks. It’s funny to see how those budget compilations that were barely promoted at the time of their release make us understand the actual success of an artist. Cher was not so overlooked as I thought from 1974 to 1987 ... she was selling compilations.
